President Obama Provides Ben Carson With a Little Cognitive Dissonance

By now we all know that Ben Carson's schtick has come down to railing against political correctness. I'd venture that Monday, President Obama served up a whole helping of cognitive dissonance for Carson to chew on about all that.

At a town hall meeting in Iowa on higher education, the President pretty effectively smacked down Carson's proposal to cut funding to colleges that demonstrate political bias.

The idea that you’d have somebody in government making a decision about what you should think ahead of time or what you should be taught, and if it’s not the right thought or idea or perspective or philosophy, that that person would be -- that they wouldn’t get funding runs contrary to everything we believe about education. I mean, I guess that might work in the Soviet Union, but it doesn’t work here. That’s not who we are. That’s not what we’re about.

The Soviet Union? Good comparison, but ouch!

Then he went on to talk about how political correctness can be a problem on college campuses.

It’s not just sometimes folks who are mad that colleges are too liberal that have a problem. Sometimes there are folks on college campuses who are liberal, and maybe even agree with me on a bunch of issues, who sometimes aren’t listening to the other side, and that’s a problem too. I’ve heard some college campuses where they don’t want to have a guest speaker who is too conservative or they don’t want to read a book if it has language that is offensive to African-Americans or somehow sends a demeaning signal towards women. I gotta tell you, I don’t agree with that either. I don’t agree that you, when you become students at colleges, have to be coddled and protected from different points of view. I think you should be able to — anybody who comes to speak to you and you disagree with, you should have an argument with ‘em. But you shouldn’t silence them by saying, "You can’t come because I'm too sensitive to hear what you have to say." That’s not the way we learn either.

That part about not "listening to the other side" is quintessential Obama - if conservatives like Ben Carson would ever actually pay attention.

The whole exchange reminded me of how - way back in 2009 - President Obama was actually in a position to walk his talk on this. In case you might have forgotten, he was invited to give the commencement address at Notre Dame, where he would also receive an honorary degree. Pro-life students objected and there was even some talk in the media about how the President should be uninvited. But Obama went to Notre Dame, dove right into the controversy to discuss abortion and gave what I think was one of the most important speeches of his presidency.

This generation, your generation is the one that must find a path back to prosperity and decide how we respond to a global economy that left millions behind even before the most recent crisis hit -- an economy where greed and short-term thinking were too often rewarded at the expense of fairness, and diligence, and an honest day’s work. Your generation must decide how to save God’s creation from a changing climate that threatens to destroy it. Your generation must seek peace at a time when there are those who will stop at nothing to do us harm, and when weapons in the hands of a few can destroy the many. And we must find a way to reconcile our ever-shrinking world with its ever-growing diversity -- diversity of thought, diversity of culture, and diversity of belief.

In short, we must find a way to live together as one human family.

And it’s this last challenge that I’d like to talk about today...For the major threats we face in the 21st century -- whether it’s global recession or violent extremism; the spread of nuclear weapons or pandemic disease -- these things do not discriminate. They do not recognize borders. They do not see color. They do not target specific ethnic groups.

Moreover, no one person, or religion, or nation can meet these challenges alone. Our very survival has never required greater cooperation and greater understanding among all people from all places than at this moment in history. Unfortunately, finding that common ground -- recognizing that our fates are tied up, as Dr. King said, in a "single garment of destiny" -- is not easy...

...And yet, one of the vexing things for those of us interested in promoting greater understanding and cooperation among people is the discovery that even bringing together persons of good will, bringing together men and women of principle and purpose -- even accomplishing that can be difficult...

The question, then -- the question then is how do we work through these conflicts? Is it possible for us to join hands in common effort? As citizens of a vibrant and varied democracy, how do we engage in vigorous debate? How does each of us remain firm in our principles, and fight for what we consider right, without, as Father John said, demonetizing those with just as strongly held convictions on the other side?

And of course, nowhere do these questions come up more powerfully than on the issue of abortion...

...in this world of competing claims about what is right and what is true, have confidence in the values with which you’ve been raised and educated. Be unafraid to speak your mind when those values are at stake. Hold firm to your faith and allow it to guide you on your journey. In other words, stand as a lighthouse. But remember, too, that you can be a crossroads. Remember, too, that the ultimate irony of faith is that it necessarily admits doubt. It’s the belief in things not seen...

And this doubt should not push us away from our faith. But it should humble us. It should temper our passions, cause us to be wary of too much self-righteousness. It should compel us to remain open and curious and eager to continue the spiritual and moral debate that began for so many of you within the walls of Notre Dame. 

The crassness of the debate we're hearing these days about "political correctness" rings completely hollow and petty when compared to that kind of depth and wisdom.

A Tale of Two Primaries

Ron Brownstein has an interesting take on what is happening in the Republican presidential primary right now.

Against the back­drop of the ac­cel­er­at­ing pres­id­en­tial race, the strains of ad­apt­ing to the na­tion’s hurt­ling demo­graph­ic and cul­tur­al change are grow­ing in­creas­ingly vis­ible. For all of the eco­nom­ic anxi­et­ies many Amer­ic­ans still ex­press, the most po­lar­iz­ing con­flicts this year are di­vid­ing the na­tion along lines of race, eth­ni­city, and cul­ture, not class. 

He goes on to say that it's not simply about how Donald Trump rose to the top of the race based on his fear mongering about Mexican immigrants. It's also about how several Republican candidates have joined the bandwagon of blaming the #BlackLivesMatter movement (and President Obama) for police shootings and their claims of a new violent crime wave. And finally, it's about how some of those same Republican candidates are joining Kim Davis in the backlash against the Supreme Court's ruling on marriage equality.

Brownstein ends with this:

Each of these dis­putes—im­mig­ra­tion, re­la­tions between Afric­an-Amer­ic­ans and the crim­in­al-justice sys­tem, same-sex equal­ity—align most Demo­crats with the forces of change and most Re­pub­lic­ans with the res­isters. On most key ques­tions, pub­lic opin­ion is flow­ing to­ward the ac­cept­ance of demo­graph­ic and cul­tur­al trans­ition, as it usu­ally has in Amer­ic­an his­tory. But today, the bal­ance re­mains pre­cari­ous between those who would em­brace or re­verse these changes.

In other words, the forces of change are upon us and that is creating a tremendous backlash in the Republican Party. I think that pretty well summarizes the situation. While "establishment candidates" like Jeb Bush want to talk about things like taxes and foreign policy, the issues Brownstein highlights are the ones that are animating Republican voters right now.

But it's interesting to note that, while the Republican anti-establishment movement is focused on race, ethnicity and cultural changes, the anti-establishment challenge in the Democratic presidential primary is coming from Bernie Sanders - whose message is all about growing income inequality, i.e., class. To be honest, I'm not quite sure what to make of that disconnect. It simply struck me as I read Brownstein's article.

I am, however, reminded of why I think that the most powerful voice on that disconnect is coming from the grassroots movement known as Moral Mondays that was started by Rev. William Barber. He talks about the history of fusion politics that sparked both the first and second reconstructions in this country and posits that we are now in the midst of a third reconstruction. Here's how he described the fusion movement of the first reconstruction in a speech at Netroots Nation in 2014.

Back then 146 years ago blacks and whites came together. In the south! And they understood the fusion between lifting up the former slaves, and how it intersected with the preservation of the south and the nation...

And we've got to be a little concerned, if people had that much sense 146 years ago when we look at the state of our crisis today. In 1868 we see this moral...fusion...language...and it formed the framework for reconstruction. Here's what they fought for with this fusion movement: voting rights, public education, labor, health care, equal protection, fair tax policy, good of the whole and that kind of agenda reshaped the south and it reshaped the country. It reshaped the world.

But it also brought a vicious backlash...

A group arose that called themselves the redemption movement and it was rooted in the extreme philosophy of immoral deconstruction and they fought back. They were moved by fear. Fear that their world was being taken over. Fear of a more just society. Fear of a more perfect union. They were radical racists and they began a process of immoral deconstruction. They began a campaign of fear and divide.

Sound familiar? Barber goes on to describe the second reconstruction that resulted in the passage of our civil rights laws and the end of Jim Crow followed by the assassination of it's leaders and the backlash unleashed by the Republican Southern Strategy. He posits that we are now in the midst of a third reconstruction that was sparked by the election of Barack Obama. But it wasn't simply about the election of our first African American president. It was the fusion politics that led to that election.

Again it is because the movement in some ways was signaled by the 2008 election of President Obama. Now it wasn't so much the president, as powerful and as hopeful as we've been about that. But what signaled that we were in the possibility of a third reconstruction was the emergence of a new majority electorate, especially in southern states.

NC is now 23% African American, 3-4 percent Latino. That's 27%. That means you only need about 24 percent of whites to vote their future not their fears.

Mississippi is 33% African American that means... then you add Latinos that means you only need about 15 to 16% of whites in the south, in Mississippi, to vote their future not their fears. Similarly in Georgia.

The campaign of President Obama, not to be partisan but to be historical, used some of the elements of fusion politics that were used in the 1800s and in the 1960s.

The result of that third reconstruction movement is the backlash that Brownstein described above. It will be up to us to decide if we can sustain the kind of fusion politics that will embrace rather than reverse these changes.

The New York Times Blows It...Again

We've all witnessed the way the New York Times has been so fast to report negative rumors when it comes to the story about Hillary Clinton's emails and so slow to report the facts when she is exonerated. But apparently their tendency to focus on the negative isn't simply limited to Hillary Clinton.

As we reported here at the Washington Monthly, President Obama announced the launch of the Department of Education's College Scorecard yesterday. Given our commitment to providing information to students and parents as they look for their "best bang for the buck" in a college education, we viewed this as a major milestone in that quest - even as Daniel Lunzer pointed out that political pressure kept the President from reaching his ultimate goal.

But take a look at the headline from the New York Times on the story: With Website to Research Colleges, Obama Abandons Ranking System. And here's the opening paragraph:

President Obama on Saturday abandoned his two-year effort to have the government create a system that explicitly rates the quality of the nation’s colleges and universities, a plan that was bitterly opposed by presidents at many of those institutions.

While they eventually get to the story of how this new tool will help prospective students, you have to wade through paragraphs detailing how President Obama's ultimate goal was derailed in order to get there. In other words, they decided that the story was all about what didn't happen with a tiny nod to what did happen as an afterthought.

I'm not going to try to analyze what is going on at the New York Times. I'll simply say that I've seen enough by now to know that I have to take their frame on any story with a grain of salt. That is a sad commentary on our country's supposed "newspaper of record."

Democrats and Black Voters

It has been pretty well established by now that a Democratic candidate can't win the nomination (or likely a general election) without the support of African Americans. Due to that fact, it is interesting to take a look at how Charles Blow is summing up the challenge that faces Bernie Sanders in that regard.

Blow interviewed Sanders and then attended his rally at Benedict College in South Carolina. His column about that summarizes both some of his potential as well as challenges.

There is an earnest, if snappy, aura to Sanders that is laudable and refreshing. One doesn’t sense the stench of ambition or the revolting unctuousness of incessant calculation.

There is an idealistic crusader in the man, possibly to the point of being quixotic, but at least it doesn’t come off as having been corrupted by money or power or the God complex that so often attends those in pursuit of the seat behind the Resolute Desk.

Sanders’s message of revolutionary change to save a flailing middle class and challenge the sprawling influence of what he calls “the billionaire class” has struck a nerve with a fervid following.

When it comes to that Sanders message, I was struck by something that Blow tweeted, but left out of his column.

The income inequality message that Sanders kept hammering got a rousing response from wht ppl in audience, but hardly a peep from blks...

— Charles M. Blow (@CharlesMBlow) September 12, 2015

In his interview with Blow, Sanders stressed that his campaign recognizes that it is important to "aggressively reach out and bring the African-American community and the Latino community into our campaign." And yet it appears as though Sanders is making the same mistake a lot of white people do when they realize the importance of garnering support from the African American community...they tweak their own message rather than listen and incorporate what they hear.

For example, Blow points out the tone-deafness of assuming that a black man like Cornell West helps in that regard.

But Sanders’s ability to win Obama’s supporters may have been made difficult by his associations. On Saturday, Sanders campaigned with Dr. Cornel West, who recently issued an endorsement of Sanders.

West’s critique of the president has been so blistering and unyielding — he has called Obama “counterfeit,” the “black face of the American empire,” a verb-ed neologism of the n-word — that it has bordered on petulance and self-parody.

I would also suggest that one of the reasons Sander's message fails to connect with African Americans is that - even in the midst of economic conditions that were much worse than today - Ellis Cose pointed out in 2011 that African Americans are the country's "new optimists."

As the United States struggles through its worst economic crisis in generations, gloom has seized much of the heartland. The optimism that came so easily to many Americans as the new century dawned is significantly harder to summon these days. There is, however, a conspicuous exception: African-Americans, long accustomed to frustration in their pursuit of opportunity and respect, are amazingly upbeat, consistently astounding pollsters with their hopefulness.

To the extent that optimism has dimmed more recently - it is in response to the shootings of unarmed Black men (often by police officers) and the lack of a "just response" from our justice system. No matter how hard Sanders tries to tie that one to his message about income inequality and economics, it will fall short of connecting to the souls of African Americans.

There is a lesson in all that for Democrats: to win the support of people of color, you have to incorporate their concerns...not simply tweak your own agenda and expect them to climb on your bandwagon.

In the Era of Big Data, GOP Prefers to Keep Us in the Dark

Harry Stein has written an important article about how, in the era of big data, the GOP has mounted an attack on evidence.

But even though Congress appears to support evidence-based policymaking in theory, a closer look shows that it is waging a quiet war on the idea. The current versions of spending bills on Capitol Hill would defund data collection, analysis, and pilot programs that are helping to solve some of the toughest challenges facing the nation.

Amid the larger debate about overall spending levels under sequestration, some cuts to evidence-based programs were probably inevitable. But this Congress seems to be targeting evidence-based initiatives in particular, and for reasons that seem deeply political.

The areas where this is happening leave no doubt about the political motivations. They include:

* Climate science
* Research on gun violence
* Comprehensive data about violent crime
* Research on new ways to control health care costs
* Evidence-based practices in education

But, as Stein notes, it's all part of a pattern (one that has been noted previously at the Washington Monthly).

The decision by Congress to weaken its own ability to gather and process evidence might be the most troubling example of how Congress has lost interest in applying evidence to inform public policy. These budget cuts undermine vital nonpartisan institutions within the legislative branch, including the policy experts at the Congressional Research Service and the investigators at the Government Accountability Office. These institutions are critical sources for Congress to get credible research and evaluation of public policy from experts who are independent from the executive branch.

And, of course, this all comes at a time when the Obama administration has been focused on evidence-based policy.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration has been implementing evidence-based initiatives of its own. Its push for more data-driven policymaking has drawn positive attention from Republicans such as Ron Haskins, a former staffer for the House Ways and Means Committee and the George W. Bush White House, whose recent book is titled “Show Me the Evidence: Obama’s Fight for Rigor and Results in Social Policy.”

“Hardly anyone knows it,” Haskins wrote in the New York Times, “but since its earliest days the Obama administration has been pursuing the most important initiative in the history of federal attempts to use evidence to improve social programs.

It all reminds me that when I was growing up, the Republicans were the "green eyeshade pencil-pushers" and the Democrats were the "peace and love" caricature. We've traded scripts since then - except that instead of peace and love, Republicans seem to be more attached to anger and fear (even when it comes to evidence, apparently).

Rumors vs Facts on Hillary Clinton's Email

Today I'd like to re-work an old saying: A rumor travels around the globe while facts are putting on their shoes. That's what I think about when I watch this whole story about Hillary Clinton's emails while she was Secretary of State.

As you know by now, the rumors have been flying lately, fueled in large part by shoddy reporting at the New York Times - of all places. Then on Wednesday, there was an important development in the story. By Thursday, the only media reporting about it was the Washington Times. Then on Friday, Buzzfeed had an article about it.

In a little noticed brief, filed on Wednesday to a federal court, Department of Justice lawyers outlined a comprehensive defense of the contentious decision by Hillary Clinton to wipe the private email server she used as secretary of state: The attorneys assert that, regardless of whether she used a personal or government account, Clinton was within her legal right to handpick the emails that qualified as federal records — and to delete the ones she deemed personal.

“There is no question that former Secretary Clinton had authority to delete personal emails without agency supervision — she appropriately could have done so even if she were working on a government server,” write the Justice Department attorneys, representing the State Department in the brief. The lawyers add that under policies issued by the State Department and by NARA, the National Archives and Records Administration, government employees “are permitted and expected to exercise judgment to determine what constitutes a federal record.”

By Friday night, major news outlets like the Associated Press had the story and then (finally!) New York Times ran with it.

I am not one that buys into conspiracy theories about how news outlets have political biases (other than Fox News, of course). But it has been fascinating to watch some of them jump at the first rumor of wrongdoing on the part of Hillary Clinton and then be so slow to provide facts that exonerate her. It’s not so clear that another old saying - “better late than never” - gives them much cover.

President Obama Announces the "College Scorecard"

This morning in his weekly address, President Obama made an important announcement.


Today the Department of Education launched a new College Scorecard to provide families and prospective students with useful data on the outcomes of investing in a college education. The President addressed not only why this is important, but how it will help.

Daniel Luzer at College Guide walks us through the original proposals the administration put forward in this area and the political challenges they faced in getting this small step in the process done. And Robert Kelchen gives us a peek inside some of the data (including great charts) that is available and how it will be useful not only to students, but to researchers. Here's how he describes some of the key data elements that are available:

* Transfer rates: The percentage of students who transfer from a two-year to a four-year college. This helps community colleges, given their mission of transfer, but still puts colleges at a disadvantage if they serve a more transient student body.

* Earnings: The distribution of earnings 10 years after starting college and the percentage earning more than those with a high school diploma. This comes from federal tax return data and is a huge step forward. However, given very reasonable concerns about a focus on earnings hurting colleges with public service missions, there is also a metric for the percentage of students making more than $25,000 per year...

* Student loan repayment: The percentage of students (both completers and non-completers) who are able to pay down some principal on loans within a certain period of time.

As publisher of The Other College Guide: A Roadmap to the Right School for You, the editors of the Washington Monthly have been advocating for the collection and dissemination of this kind of information for a long time now. This morning's announcement is very welcome news indeed.

I am struck by how well this fits into President Obama's pattern of incentivizing reform.

Rather than a top-down command-and-control process where the leader prescribes the changes that are necessary, a pragmatic leader identifies the outcomes that are desired and then incentivizes the system to change itself from the bottom up.

At this point, the incentives for change come when/if students and families actually use this information to make decisions about where to make investments in a college education. So let's get the word out about this new tool that can help them make an informed choice.